AngularJS - Why is ng-bind faster than expressions?

Question

From this question and this answer, it seems that using expressions will cause the value to be evaluated from scratch every time. But I\'ve searched the documentation and tutori

Answer 1

Details like this aren't always available in the documentation - you have to read the source. I took a peek and it seems that (as of 2014-11-24) they both work in a very similar way. Both cause a single directive to be instantiated to change the value when needed (the curly interpolation directive is generated on the fly).

Both directives evaluate the expressions involved on every $digest just like everything else. The main difference is that while ng-bind doesn't do any further processing on the value, with curlies, the entire interpolated text is recalculated on every digest. Essentially a string is built using $interpolate and that is compared with the previous value (this happens within the bowels of $digest). Neither way will update the DOM if the value (either the plain value with ng-bind or the interpolated result with curlies) hasn't changed.

To me the accepted answer on that question is a more compelling reason to use ng-bind, i.e. you can use it to prevent a visible flash of the template tags before Angular loads and compiles them, without resorting to hacks like ng-cloak.

Depending on variables there may also be cases where curly interpolation is actually more performant. One situation I can think of is when using ng-bind instead of interpolation requires you to create a lot of otherwise redundant elements, and that tips the scales in the other direction. An interpolation expression also causes a single watcher to be created for the entire string independent of how many variables you use, as opposed to ng-bind which creates one watcher for each instance.

But as always, don't optimize for performance early, and if you do, profile to find out which part really matters.